San Antonian awaits inaugural national Spanish spelling bee

Linda Duann Rodriguez, San Antonio's representative among 11 finalists at the first ever National Spanish Spelling Bee in Albuquerque this weekend, gets prepped for an interview with ESPN about the upcoming competition. Photo by Francisco Vara-Orta

Linda, 14, barely makes the cut because she is nearly a freshman so feels the stakes are high. The contestants are from the fourth to eighth grades, rules modeled after the longest-running statewide Spanish spelling bee in New Mexico, where some districts have held the events for almost 30 years. Linda slid in as an eighth-grader when selected.

She’s feverishly studied at least two hours a day for a month now since getting final confirmation she would be a contestant, bumping it up to three hours this week as the competition approached. She relished studying the words for the hardest rounds, she said.

On Friday morning, Linda sat in a coral dress listening to the spelling bee coordinators recite the rules of the competition and get an overall pep talk about making it to the finals.

Like the wildly popular National Spelling Bee in English, contestants can ask for the words to be repeated, defined and used in a sentence, often a tactic used to buy some time. In addition, there are protocols on how to make note of accent marks – something different from the English counterpart.

For Linda, it has been a momentous occasion, not only a child coming of age in the dual-language curriculum gaining steam in the U.S. educational system but for her as a young woman. Her trip to New Mexico was the first she’s ever taken away from her family, as her mother had to stay behind in San Antonio to care for her younger siblings and her father had to fly off to Japan for government work.

“It’s a bit scary in a few different ways, but I know they are here with me and helped get me here,” Linda says during a break.

She then shows the chaperone assigned to her the online comments on the Express-News article about her competing in the bee, visibly bothered by the untrue claims by some people insinuating she’s here illegally. Her chaperone, Rosalinda Carreon-Altamirano of Las Cruces Public Schools, comforts her by saying, “You can’t fix ignorance often.”

All 11 students introduced themselves in Spanish, gracefully rolling their r’s and using in various forms the word “ganar,” which means “to win” as they finished their mini-speeches. Despite the competition, parents and students mingled quite warmly afterwards.

The students were then whisked away to a makeshift ESPN studio in a hotel room, where they wore a microphone and were interviewed “pre-game” style about who they were, how they got there, and their strategies to win. ESPN is producing a promotional film to attract sponsors to fund broadcasting the competition nationally next year.

The ESPN interviewer asks Linda in Spanish whether she has a favorite word she likes to practice.

“Yes,” she says with a giggle. “Otorrinolaringólogo.” It means ear, nose and throat specialist and is one of the hardest words in the competition. She rattles it off flawlessly making note of the accents and impressing the ESPN crew.

She takes off her mic and heads to lunch, as do her competitors. This evening, she says she needs to keep studying. The big day is tomorrow.

The first-ever Spanish spelling bee in Albuquerque starts Saturday at 11 a.m. CDT. Follow @fvaraorta on Twitter for updates with a final story in Sunday’s paper on who won and how Linda fared.